Yergens DW, Dutton DJ, Patten SB: An overview of the statistical methods reported by studies using the Canadian community health survey. BMC Medical Research Methodology 2014, 14:15

Data management and custom softwareOnce references were identified for inclusion by our literature search strategy, they were imported into a custom Java-based program that was used to facilitate the management of references and PDF documents. This software was created by DWY [9] and utilized for this project, hereafter “ Synthesis ” (www.synthesis.info). Synthesis uses the open-source Apache Lucene [10] database, which is a searchable database designed for the management and retrieval of textual information.Lucene has been applied to medical and biology Information Retrieval projects in the past [11,12]. Synthesis uses Lucene's text search abilities to find key words or phrases in an article, similar to what can be done in most commercially available word processors by using the "find" com-mand. Lucene is also able to search information within tables, as long as the table has not been embedded in the PDF as an image. The software then summarized, counted, and organized the identified keywords. These organized results included bibliographic information for each document, the electronic copy of that document with keywords identified in the document, and identified keyword variables that can later be filtered or otherwise manipulated (similar to values stored in a spreadsheet program). Using this software greatly increased the speed with which this literature search and analysis could be completed, thereby increasing the volume of articles that could be feasibly searched.